What We Ate Wednesday--How Not To Die Red Bean and Quinoa Soup

Hello lovelies! Last week we took a break from healthy dinners and showed you something for afters, but this week i am looking at another recipe from the How Not To Die Cookbook. 

The original recipe called for black beans, but they cost 55p a tin and you needed two of them (making it £1.10) whereas kidney beans are between 29p a tin to 33p a tin depending on where i get them from, so I went with red beans. I suspect the original recipe might have used spinach, but i used my trusty kale. . How Not To Die always goes for sweet potatoes and they have more colour, so therefore more nutrients. I did go with sweet potatoes as i had one left over from making the Sweet Potato and White Bean Curry. But white potatoes would be fine too. Go with what you got, I always say

This is another of the nutrient dense recipes we have been eating of late. They are healthy and filling and just chock full o' goodness. It also uses quinoa which is a superfood pseudo-grain. Quinoa can be pricey, but this soup only uses 1/3 cup of it so gives you the goodness, but keeps it budget friendly.

How Not to Die (HNTD) has a spice blend that appears in several recipes. It was mostly things I had on hand, I just had to buy some mustard powder. I will share another recipe next week that uses the spice blend, so you feel like you have other places to use it. But to be fair, it's a flavourful no salt blend that you could put in anything you wanted to pep up.

HNTD Spice Blend
2 TB nutritional yeast flakes
1 TB onion powder
1 TB dried parsley
1 TB dried basil
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp mustard powder
2 tsp (smoked) paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp celery seeds

Whizz up in a spice grinder to make a powder.

How Not To Die Red Bean and Quinoa Soup
1 onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 carrot, chopped
1/2 a pepper, diced
1 sweet potato (or white potato)
2 tsp HNTD spice blend
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
1/3 cup (55g) quinoa, rinsed well in a sieve
2 tins kidney or black beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups vegetable broth
1 tin tomatoes
100g kale, de-stemmed and torn into bits (about 4 cups)

1. Cook the onion, carrot, pepper, garlic and sweet potato in a splash of water until softened.
2. Add the spices and stir to coat. Add the broth, tomatoes, beans and quinoa and bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer until quinoa is soft. About 15 minutes.
3. Add kale and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the kale has softened. About 5 minutes.
4. Serve.

This was my first time making the recipe. It made a huge amount and was very filling, so we packed away the other half and had it a second day. Sometimes we are greedy vegans and go back for seconds, but this time we were full up.

If you haven't read How Not To Die, it is an interesting read. The idea that nutrient rich foods can prevent diseases and in some cases reverse them like heart disease or diabetes is fascinating to me. Maybe you want to clean up your eating and improve your health? Then check out this book.